“Yes…well…so…so, you deny everything then?” Anastasius recalled part of the speech he had planned, but it didn’t make as much sense as it had earlier when his imagined Artabanes played his role better.
Losing the fight to keep his balance, Artabanes took a staggering step backwards. His legs hit the bench and he sat down abruptly, knocking three empty cups into the bushes. “Please have a seat,” he said thickly.
Not only was the bench crowded with cups and jugs, but it also looked coated with what, at best, might be half-dried wine. “No, thank you! You deny everything, I take it?”
“Deny? What do I deny?”
Artabanes’ refusal to play his role began to get Anastasius angry again. “Murdering my grandmother!”
Artabanes stared at him with bloodshot eyes. He picked up a cup, noticed it was empty, tossed it away, picked up another, and slurped some wine. “What do you mean, I murdered your grandmother? Are you intoxicated, son?”
“You’re asking me whether I’m drunk?”
“Are you?”
The general was as mad as his servant, thought Anastasius.
“One as young as yourself should not become involved with Bacchus,” Artabanes went on. “However, since you have already been drinking, please have some wine.” He gestured toward a large blue glass jug.
“No, thank you.”
Artabanes narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps you are too young to-”
Anastasius grabbed the jug and picked up a wine glass that didn’t look too soiled. He poured himself a drink and gulped it down. He might as well have swallowed fire. No water had been added. Once he had managed to avoid choking, however, he had a second cup.
“Now,” said Artabanes. “What is this about my murdering your grandmother? If I was the sort to resort to murder I would have killed her before she forced me to occupy this wretched house with my so-called wife and married off my beloved to another man. It’s a little late now.”
“You wanted vengeance. People do want vengeance. As a matter of honor.”
“Let me guess, that is why you are here. To avenge your grandmother.”
Anastasius, who was finishing another cup of wine, made a conscious effort to stand up straight. “That is correct, sir.” The wine was helping him regain his resolve.
“A fine sentiment, son. It’s good to see a youngster with some spine. But alas, your anger at me is misplaced.”
“I don’t understand. Do you mean that after everything my grandmother did to you…well, not that I wished you’d killed her…”
“No, aside from how much I am sure you loved your grandmother, there is that matter of your marriage to…what is her name…Belisarius’ girl.”
“Joannina.”
“Yes. Joannina. That marriage is not likely to occur now, is it? Any more than my marriage to Praejecta did. Your grandmother was forever meddling, one way and another. Assisting you, thwarting me.” He paused and his gaunt features tightened as he looked down into his cup. “There is some deep ironic philosophical lesson in our situations, son, though I have no idea what it might be.”
Anastasius licked his lips. He felt warm inside from the wine and its fumes seemed to be rising into his head. He didn’t care for the way Artabanes kept calling him “son,” particularly since it had never been made clear to him by what lineage, exactly, Theodora considered him her grandson.
“Yes,” he finally said with some difficulty. “Our situations are exactly the same but just the opposite. But, you see, the irony is if they weren’t exactly the same they couldn’t be opposite, so they are more the same than they are different. If you see what I mean.”
Artabanes nodded gravely. “You are a born philosopher, son.”
“But look, sir. I’m glad you didn’t harm grandmother, but the emperor could have overruled her, couldn’t he?”
“In such an affair? Unlikely.”
“Yet he could have. But he is weak. He even allowed grandmother to tell him which general should have command in Italy. She never liked Germanus, the emperor’s own cousin, and he listened to her.”
“Everyone who has a grievance against the emperor imagines that Germanus would be an improvement.”
“Wouldn’t he be?”
“Why ask me?”
Anastasius was distracted by women’s voices. He looked over the low hedge toward the front of the garden and saw a well-dressed woman in her thirties accompanied by a companion who had the air of being an attendant. The woman had dark hair and tawny skin. Anastasius thought she must have been attractive in her youth. The two women came down the path on the other side of the hedge.
Artabanes went on speaking, giving no sign that he noticed them. “You aren’t going to ask me to ally myself with Germanus in a plot against the emperor, are you? Every young, ambitious hothead in the capital is talking like that. It’s all it is, talk. Do you hear what I’m saying, son? Don’t pay attention to them. That’s enemy territory. We take no notice of what goes on over there.”
“Your wife?”
Artabanes gave a grunt of disgust. “I have no wife.”
The women strolled past, hardly an arm’s breadth away, chattering on about certain flowers which were beginning to bloom. Anastasius and Artabanes might as well not have been there.
Anastasius drank more wine. He realized hitherto he had been adding too much water to his wine. It was much tastier undiluted. It wasn’t surprising Artabanes would possess a store of very good wine. He was, after all, a general.
“It would suit you if Germanus took over, wouldn’t it? He’d banish Belisarius and Antonina. Then you and…uh…whatever her name is…could get married as Theodora planned. Without you having to kill your intended’s mother. They don’t like their mothers being killed.”
Anastasius studied the receding backs of the women over the top of his cup. It was rather humorous. He had to keep blinking or else he saw four women. He wondered how Artabanes had seen his intentions so clearly. He had thought it rather subtle. A way to remove Antonina’s influence, but not in a manner that would turn Joannina against him.
Artabanes struggled to his feet and clapped a hand on Anastasius’ shoulder, in either a show of companionship or simply to support himself. Before Anastasius knew what was happening Artabanes was refilling his cup from the jug he held.
Anastasius had begun to feel dizzy. Joannina wouldn’t want him drinking so much. She’d be angry if he arrived home inebriated. Well, he told himself, how dare she? It wasn’t up to her to tell him how much to drink. He was a man, wasn’t he? What business was it of hers?
He poured more wine down his throat.
“It’s not that I couldn’t slay the tyrant,” Artabanes was saying. “I’ve slain tyrants in my time. Gontharis for one. Let me tell you about Gontharis. We were at a banquet. Gontharis was drinking. He was drunk. You, son, pretend you’re the tyrant.”
***
John was on the way to the administrative complex when he heard his name called.
He turned to see a young woman running in his direction. Her robes-much too heavy and lavish for exertion-were disordered and her hair flew in all directions. At first he mistook her for Vesta, then he realized it was the girl’s mistress, Joannina.
She stopped beside him, gasping, hand held up to her heaving chest. “Lord Chamberlain! Thank goodness I caught you!”
“Is there some trouble?”
“It’s Anastasius. He visited Artabanes and the general tried to poison him.”
Having seen the sorry shape Artabanes had been in the previous day John found it difficult to imagine him having the ability, let alone the presence of mind, to attempt poisoning a visitor. “What makes you think Anastasius was poisoned, Joannina?”
“He told me so, after his bodyguards carried him home.”
“Carried him home?”
“He couldn’t stand up. He was horribly ill.”
“Did he by any chance smell of wine?” John asked, recalling that wine was a poison very much present at Artabanes’ villa.
“That’s what the poison was concealed in, obviously,” said Joannina.